The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton

When I read de Botton admit to having guiltily scoffed down three pain au chocolat while making sure no one saw, I catch a reflection of myself in the author. You see, it just so happens that I too recently ate numerous pains au chocolat in guilty…
-The Uncustomary Book Review

Synopsis

Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why. With the same intelligence and insouciant charm he brought to How Proust Can Save Your Life, de Botton considers the pleasures of anticipation; the allure of the exotic, and the value of noticing everything from a seascape in Barbados to the takeoffs at Heathrow.

Even as de Botton takes the reader along on his own peregrinations, he also cites such distinguished fellow-travelers as Baudelaire, Wordsworth, Van Gogh, the biologist Alexander von Humboldt, and the 18th-century eccentric Xavier de Maistre, who catalogued the wonders of his bedroom. The Art of Travel is a wise and utterly original book. Don’t leave home without it.

Alain de Botton is the bestselling author of How Proust Can Change Your Life, as well as numerous other works of fiction and essays. He is well-known for making complex philosophical and artistic subjects accessible for a wider audience. De Botton founded the School of Life, a series of lectures in London that aim to make academic learning applicable to real life. With the success of the school, this concept was adapted into The School of Life book series. De Botton lives and works in London.

The Uncustomary Book Review

Reviewed by Kat Kiddles
on
Dec 13 2010

When I read de Botton admit to having guiltily scoffed down three pain au chocolat while making sure no one saw, I catch a reflection of myself in the author. You see, it just so happens that I too recently ate numerous pains au chocolat in guilty…